Archive for the ‘Sex Trafficking’ Category

Editor’s Note: Somaly Mam is a global leader who has pioneered the movement against modern slavery for nearly two decades. She has been recognized as a CNN hero, Glamour Magazine’s Woman of the Year, and one of Time Magazine’s most influential people. Through her work as a tireless advocate and human rights leader, Somaly Mam has made it her life’s mission to eradicate slavery and empower its survivors as part of the solution. This article is part of a series of op-eds from key speakers and delegates participating in this year’s Social Innovation Summit, which takes place on November 19th and 20th at Stanford Business School. View the full series here.

As a survivor of sex slavery, I have dedicated my life’s work to ending it. To many people, the issue of slavery seems like a clear case of right and wrong. The reality is much more complicated. There are many root causes and serious challenges. But these challenges do not stop me from continuing to find solutions to eradicate slavery and empower its survivors as part of the solution.

A significant number of people believe that slavery ended in 1863, when in fact, modern slavery exists in every corner of the globe. Not just in remote parts of Southeast Asia, but in your hometown, in your backyard. In America, there are 60,000 men, women, and children enslaved at this very moment.

On November 29, 2013, French MPs voted in support of a version of the Swedish law on prostitution that criminalizes the purchase of sex with a fine of €1500 ($2040 US). The fine is doubled for a second offense. The French Parliament also repealed criminalization of people selling sex, and proposed setting aside €20 million for programs helping women to exit prostitution.

This vote is part of a global trend that challenges buying sex and understands as the Swedish law does that buying sex causes harm and that those in prostitution need social and economic support to escape. In France, 90% of those in prostitution are very poor, pimped or trafficked. A 2011 study by researchers from Germany’s Goettingen and Heidelberg universities and the London School of Economics, which assessed data from 150 countries, concluded that legalizing prostitution led to increased trafficking. The proposed law will be voted on by the National Assembly and then put to a vote in the French Senate.

Since prostitution is an activity that must be advertised, it is not going to be “driven underground” as critics of the bill allege. Maud Olivier, a feminist lawmaker who supports the bill, blasted the “hypocrisy” of critics, “One prostitute declares herself free and the slavery of others becomes respectable and acceptable?”

“Prostitution is Violence, Vote for Abolition” and “Our bodies are not merchandise”

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To show how undisturbed child predators can act but also to show how easy it is to track them down the Dutch child rights organisation put herself in the shoes of a 10 year old Philippine girl.

Together with Avaaz.org, Terre des Hommes the Netherlands has created an online petition to pressure governments to adopt proactive investigation policies in order to protect children against webcam child sex tourism. The petition starts today and can be signed through Avaazor via youtube.com/sweetie.

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A local man and woman were arrested over the weekend in connection with alleged prostitution involving a 16-year-old girl.

Charged were Aileen M. Mays, 27, of Binder Basin Road in Glouster, and Fred W. Kittle, Sr., 69, of Rocky Point Road in Athens. A release on Athens County Sheriff Pat Kelly’s Facebook page alleges that Mays told officers that in exchange for drugs, she set up meetings between Kittle and the girl to have sex.

Kittle is a registered sex offender, having been convicted of attempted rape in 1996.

The 16-year-old girl has been placed in the custody of Athens County Children Services. At this time, reports don’t indicate where the girl is from.

According to the sheriff’s account, one of his investigators who works with caseworkers from Children Services got information last Monday that a girl was being prostituted for money and drugs.

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Child sex trafficking is a growing problem in Arizona – with at-risk youth being easy targets for pimps.

Experts who spoke at an educational event at Paradise Valley United Methodist Church on Monday night said a record number of children in foster care, combined with a flourishing drug market, has created a perfect storm in Arizona.

“It really needs to be a communitywide effort because it’s happening everywhere and everybody has a role in it,” said Savannah Sanders, a program assistant with the group Training and Resources United to Stop Trafficking or TRUST.

For Sanders, the issue is personal.

She said she was trafficked in Phoenix when she was 16 years old.

Sanders said she fell in with a pimp who took all her money and held her hostage for nine months.

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A woman who claims she was forced into the sex trade in Dubai has told how a man paid Dhs4,000 to have sex with her over a period of three days.

The 20-year-old Pakistani claims she was lured to Dubai with promises of work as a maid. However, she claims she was instead made to be a sex slave.

A 38-year-old Pakistani woman has gone on trial at Dubai Court of First Instance accused of human trafficking, which she denies. Prosecutors said the victim came to the UAE in August. Three days later, she was told she would be working as a prostitute, the court heard. The defendant allegedly threatened to hurt the victim and her family back in Pakistan if she did not comply.

Keyana Marshall’s story is similar to many other victims of sex trafficking. At the age of 15 she babysat for a woman who turned out to be a madam, and that’s when she says the trouble began.

“She had me answering her business line, she owned a business and I babysat for all kinds of businesses in the past,” said Marshall. “It was my way to help my mother around the house, things like that.”

It was through that babysitting gig Marshall became connected with a man who she says coerced her into the sex trafficking industry.

“He forced me into sexual acts with him, forced me to watch him perform sexual acts on others, and used violence.”

Marshall got out of the trade, but says she was mistaken by law enforcement for someone who willingly engaged in prostitution and as a result spent time in prison.

Guddi was tricked into prostitution by a neighbour who promised her work in Mumbai to help feed her struggling family. Photograph: Hazel Thompson

It was pitch black as I stumbled through the labyrinth of the dark corridors of a large brothel house in Kamathipura, Mumbai’s notorious red-light district. I’d been told to hide my camera under my scarf, not to speak and not to make eye contact with anyone. With my hand I felt the filthy walls dripping with condensation from the intense heat.

Eventually, guided by my Indian fixer, I came to a dimly lit door at the end of a corridor. Like a prison guard, an ageing madam came to the front of the brothel and unlocked the large padlock with her set of keys. I was taken into the reception area of the brothel, the space where the customers are taken to select a girl. In the ceiling I could see a small, open trap door. When the madam had disappeared, I climbed up a wooden ladder and pushed through the small gap.

Suddenly I was face to face with a “box cage”. I knew what I was looking at. The prostitutes had told me of the caged rooms and boxes they had been held in for months, even years, when they were first taken and trafficked to the red-light district. The madams would keep the girls like slaves in the cages until they were “broken”, to the extent that they would not try to run away. The girls told me they never knew if it was night or day. They were only taken out to eat or to be given to a customer for sex. For years I had wanted to photograph these cages, to prove that these places actually exist.

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Long Beach Councilwoman Gerrie Schipske last week issued a statement regarding gangs and sex trafficking activity in the city.

“As a member of the Council Public Safety Committee, I am very concerned about the cuts that were made in the Long Beach Police Department’s Gang Unit in the Mayor’s Budget.

“I am concerned that our police do not have the resources they need to target the gangs that are often linked to the violent crimes being committed in some Council Districts (not the 5th). And because the politicians in Sacramento (even our own representatives) voted to release prisoners and send them back home, we are experiencing an increase in property crimes on the east side of Long Beach. Now we learn that there is an increase of sex trafficking in Long Beach which is directly tied to gangs.

“Sex trafficking is the third biggest criminal industry after drugs and arms trafficking and involves the exploitation of mostly young women and girls through forced prostitution.

“Street gangs operate commercial sex rings, which make profits from the sale of young women. Attorney General Kamala D. Harris has called human trafficking a low-risk and high-reward crime for gangs.

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I recently read an article in the Metro newspaper about Canadian forced marriages that left me feeling conflicted. On one hand, I was pleased to see that this issue is getting a lot of recent media attention for the human rights abuse that it is. On the other, I am concerned that the media has missed a very important point in not labelling forced marriages for what they are: human trafficking. Human trafficking is defined as the recruitment, transportation, harboring, or holding of persons for the purpose of exploitation. There is usually an added component of control that traffickers have over their victims, including force, sexual assault and threats of violence. Forcing someone to marry another against their will by using threats, force or assault satisfies this criteria. In plain and simple terms, forced marriage is slavery.